Kandinsky, Wassily or Vasily 1866–1944, Russian abstract painter and theorist. Usually regarded as the originator of abstract art, Kandinsky abandoned a legal career for painting at 30 when he moved to Munich. In subsequent trips to Paris he came into contact with the art of Gauguin, neoimpressionism (see postimpressionism)
Kandinsky exhibited with the Brücke group, and with Franz Marc and others he founded the Blaue Reiter group. In 1915 he returned to Moscow, where he taught and directed artistic activities. During the early 1920s his style evolved from riotous bursts of color in his “Improvisations”
See his Reminiscences (1913; tr. in Modern Artists on Art, ed. by R. L. Herbert, 1964); biographies by J. Lassaigne (1964) and J. Hahl-Koch (1994); P. Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich: 1896–1914 (1982); V. E. Barnett, Kandinsky: At the Guggenheim (1983); C. V. Poling, Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915–1933 (1983); Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Staff, Kandinsky in Paris, 1934–1944 (1985); A. and L. Vezin, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider (1992); T. M. Messer, Vasily Kandinsky (1997); U. Becks-Malorny, Wassily Kandinsky, 1866–1944:
